Ron Paul's Alaska payback

By CHARLES MAHTESIAN

04/29/2012 03:45 AM EDT

Despite a disappointing third place finish in the March 6 Alaska caucuses, Ron Paul is looking like a winner there: A Paul supporter was voted in as the new GOP chairman Saturday at the state convention.

It's more evidence of the political maturation of the Paul forces, who are beginning to seize the levers of powers from within state parties.

This weekend, it was the young, sometimes bedraggled but always politically strident and not always so polite, supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul who were certain that if they were in charge of the party, Alaska and the country would be a better place.

And now they’ll get their chance to prove it.

After at least 12 years of the Alaska GOP being run by what those party newcomers call “establishment Republicans,” a new force is taking over: Alaska Republicans voted Russ Millete as the party’s new chairman and Debbie Holland-Brown as co-chair. They are both supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

There are signs that this might not be the smoothest of transitions -- the Dispatch reports "the state GOP transferred all, or nearly all, of its roughly $100,000 to the local Capital City Republicans in Juneau" in advance of the vote.

It was a tough weekend all around for the GOP establishment in Anchorage -- from this KTUU report, it looks like Sen. Lisa Murkowski also had a rough go of it at the convention.